Unless otherwise indicated herein, the materials described in this section are not prior art to the claims in this application are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
With an increasing demand for energy and fossil fuels in limited supply, the demand for renewable energy sources is growing steadily. To meet such demand, various types of power generation systems have been designed to convert chemical and/or mechanical energy (e.g., kinetic energy) to electrical energy. Many of these power generation systems utilize wind energy by converting the kinetic energy of the wind to electrical energy. Traditional wind turbines include blades or propellers that can be rotated by the wind to convert wind energy to rotational energy, as well as systems for converting this rotational energy into electrical energy.
An Airborne Wind Turbine (AWT) is a wind energy system that utilizes a tethered aerial vehicle to generate electrical power, which is transferred from the aerial vehicle to the grid via the tether. For example, an AWT may include an aerial vehicle that flies in a closed (e.g., ellipsoidal, and perhaps circular) path to generate power. The ground station and tether may allow for rotation of the tether about the ground station, perhaps continuously. As such, the aerial vehicle's flight path may be oriented with respect to the ground station and wind direction such that the apparent wind rotates the vehicle's propellers and thereby generates electrical energy. The energy generated by the rotation of the propellers may then be transferred via a tether to a ground station, which is connected to the electrical grid.
There may be instances where the potential trajectory of airborne objects, such as bats, birds, or unmanned objects, may lead it directly in the path of the aerial vehicle of the AWT. The AWT will analyze numerous location and position information of both the airborne objects and the aerial vehicle to determine whether the aerial vehicle may need to shift to a different flight path in order to avoid colliding with the incoming airborne objects.